


to become another's

by silentbutdeadly



Series: the living record [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drunkenness, First Dates, Getting Together, M/M, and vomit and student bars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 14:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18075569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentbutdeadly/pseuds/silentbutdeadly
Summary: Shiro manages to get Adam standing with an arm wrapped securely around Adam’s waist. He hands over a fifty for Adam’s drinks and tells the bartender to keep the change, flushing slightly when the bartender flashes him a knowing grin. The bartender’s eyes travel up and down his body, lingering on his chest. Shiro feels rather objectified.“I’d rather keep you instead,” the bartender says, because there’s no better time to shoot your shot than when the object of your affections is locked in a drunken embrace with the object of his affections. The bartender eyes Adam consideringly. “But going by the looks of this one, I don’t think you know how to treat a boy right.” He nods at Adam, who looks back at him coolly.“I will vomit over the counter,” Adam says.





	to become another's

**Author's Note:**

> This is the direct sequel to "still stuttering", the first work in this series, so head over there first if you want a lot more context and memes and uni tomfoolery.
> 
> Lots and lots of thanks to Claire, who keeps editing my stuff even though she's literally never watched a minute of VLD in her life. She comes up with hot takes like "if u sneak up to [Shiro] when he's standing really still and listen very carefully the shrieking and banging noises u hear are the bats colliding in his empty skull".

One of Shiro’s favourite things about Adam is his hair. To the untrained and unappreciative eye, it’s a plain shade of brown, the standard haircut of every university guy too stressed or forgetful or broke to remember to cut his hair. In Adam’s case, it hangs mercilessly in his eyes, forcing him to push it back every few minutes according to Shiro’s count. Shiro, in turn, is always two seconds away from telling him it looks sexy pushed back, though he does like it best when Adam’s just woken up and he looks like he has a hedgehog for hair.

It’s what helps him find Adam in the throng of The Fighter — he’s seated at the counter, yanking his hair in frustration. The mussed honey strands glint in the darkness of the bar like Shiro’s own private lighthouse.

“Turn around.”

Shiro says it with enough confidence that Adam nearly falls when he twists in his stool. He barely catches Adam by the armpits when he teeters off — then they’re pressed against each other, much closer than they’ve been in the past couple of weeks. He can feel Adam’s body heat through their clothes and he still smells like Adam underneath all that beer, a complicated little scent that brings Shiro to his knees. Suddenly he can’t help himself — he is penitent and needy and in love, so he holds Adam closer because he’s missed this so. Fucking. Much.

Adam tucks his head into Shiro’s neck and rumbles incoherently, like a dissatisfied little boulder. It’s a fitting turn of phrase, Shiro thinks, struggling with Adam’s sudden dead weight as he shuffles him back to his chair. He freezes when Adam groans in his ear like a man who will vomit indiscriminately if he’s moved an inch in the wrong direction. Shiro doesn’t breathe until the moans die down into soft little whimpers.

Adam’s chin digs into his collarbone, and the wheeze of his breath is warm and moist on Shiro’s skin. “’m gonna be sick,” he grunts.

“You’re always sick to me,” Shiro jokes weakly. Adam groans louder and jabs Shiro’s stomach in retaliation. “The _cool_ sick,” he amends, wheezing — Adam’s tasers are still deadly, even with his balance shot to shit.

Shiro manages to get Adam standing with an arm wrapped securely around Adam’s waist. He hands over a fifty for Adam’s drinks and tells the bartender to keep the change, flushing slightly when the bartender flashes him a knowing grin. The bartender’s eyes travel up and down his body, lingering on his chest. Shiro feels rather objectified.

“I’d rather keep you instead,” the bartender says, because there’s no better time to shoot your shot than when the object of your affections is locked in a drunken embrace with the object of _his_ affections. The bartender eyes Adam consideringly. “But going by the looks of this one, I don’t think you know how to treat a boy right.” He nods at Adam, who looks back at him coolly.

“I will vomit over the counter,” Adam says. The sweetness of his tone is at odds with his threat.

The bartender pouts, surprisingly untroubled. “Well, that’s not very nice.”

Adam smiles with a touch of mania. He lurches out of Shiro’s grip, his forearms hitting the edge of the counter with a threatening thud. “Well,” he says, his eyes lucid and dangerous in The Fighter’s dim light, “maybe you should keep your hands off my man.”

 _Fuck_. Adam being possessive is _hot_.

A tiny part of his brain, the one not distracted by the sight of Adam’s powerful swimmer’s shoulders and the worn Levi’s stretched tight across his gorgeous ass, recognizes that he needs to diffuse the situation immediately. Drunk Adam, as recently demonstrated, is a beacon for chaos.

He gives himself two seconds to ogle Adam before he pulls himself together. He grabs Adam's coat, tugs him away from the bar, and is slightly amused but mostly turned on when Adam refuses to break eye contact until Shiro’s pulled the pub door shut behind them.

Adam vomits on the sidewalk. He misses both their shoes, but gets puke on his shirt.

 

—

 

The sun has a personal vendetta against Shiro’s eyes.

He blinks, groggy from sleep, and groans when he sees the time on his phone. _Thursday, January 17, 2019_ , it reads. _11:39_ _AM._

His only lecture for the day ended more than an hour ago.

The dorm is empty.

Adam’s absence shocks him awake. He’s on his feet in an instant, crossing the dorm to lay a hand on Adam’s bed. The sheets are rumpled like they are every morning, but the bed is cold — the only indication that Adam had even slept in the room last night is the empty glass of water on his nightstand, next to a bottle of aspirin.

Adam had passed out on the way back from the bar, leaving Shiro to piggyback him through campus and up the flights of their dorm. Shiro had tucked him into bed close to midnight, which meant that Adam had had more than enough time to pass out for a solid ten hours and get the fuck out of there once he saw Shiro still knocked out on his own bed.

Shiro’s not going to let him run away again, and he’ll tear apart this whole campus to find him.

He scrambles to the door and shoves his feet in the nearest pair of shoes, not even caring about socks. He yanks the door open and is treated to the sight of Adam in a bathrobe, clutching his toiletries and clothes to his chest. Adam stares at him in confusion and alarm. He looks like the living statue of David, caught off guard by the arrival of unexpected visitors while he’s relaxing at home. Shiro faintly registers that he’s the unplanned visitor in this metaphor, blocking the doorway with his mouth hanging open and dried saliva on his shirt.

Adam steps back and breaks their little tableau. He takes in Shiro’s mussed hair, the pillow wrinkles on his face, and the dishevelled clothing that Shiro rushes to fix. “Did you just wake up?” 

Shiro clears his throat to calm his sudden nerves. “Yeah,” he answers, “I woke up and you were missing, so I thought you ran away again. Then I got scared and went to look for you.” He steps aside hastily when he realizes that he’s still blocking the entrance to their room.

Adam brushes past him and leaves him to close the door. “I have to admit, I’m surprised you’re still here,” he says, pulling on his jeans. Shiro fights to reveal none of his admiration for Adam’s body, his face intentionally blank. Adam peeks at him over his shoulder and laughs. “Don’t even bother. I know you’re a horny bastard — you were staring at my chest when you opened the door.”

“I mean, sort of? To the chest bit, not the horny bastard one.” Shiro sits down on his side of the room. “You were carrying a lot of stuff, and you always look really relaxed coming out of the shower. Which is, um, a good look on you.” Adam is particularly beautiful when he’s not laid down with stress and worries — it’s an occurrence that’s rarer than it should be, but Shiro knows it only gets harder the further they get on and so he tries not to take these little moments for granted.

Adam emerges under a cloud of fluffy towel and even fluffier hair. “Thanks,” he says dryly. “It means a lot.”

“Anytime,” Shiro replies. “How’s the hangover?”

“Barely there.” Adam tilts his head towards the glass and medication. “Thanks for that, by the way. And for everything else you did before that.”

“Anytime,” repeats Shiro. “And, uh, speaking of what I did before…” Adam stills, and he feels dread settle on his shoulders like a too tight coat. “Are you ever going to believe me when I say I love you?”

Adam turns around and his face is twisted as if he’s taken a bite of something not to his taste, but not gross enough to spit it out for lack of propriety. “I don’t know, are you ever going to tell me why you disappeared after Christmas?”

The shot stings like it’s supposed to. Shiro hadn't expected immediate acquiescence, especially not after last night’s mess, but he can’t let this misunderstanding go on any longer. He’s fairly certain he knows where he went wrong, anyways. “I can tell you now, if you want to listen.”

Adam, when he looks Shiro in the eyes, is unreadable. “I do,” he says.

Alright then.

“So,” Shiro says, “over the break, I asked you if Keith said anything weird when he jacked my computer. And you said that he’d just been asking you about Christmas gifts.” He feels like he’s tripping over every single word, his tongue thick and useless in his mouth.

“That sounds about right.” Adam’s not looking at him. He’s perched on the side of his own bed, hugging himself.

“Right,” Shiro echoes. He’s suddenly very tired — tired of stepping around each other, tired of misunderstanding each other, and most of all, tired of not having his best friend. “Anyway, I found out that Keith told you I liked you. I didn’t take that too well, and then you didn’t say anything when I asked, so…” So then Shiro thought that he’d been reading this whole thing wrong, that his best friend didn’t love him the way that he did, and that he’d needed to stop and move the fuck on. “I thought you were giving me an out. Or rejecting me nicely  — an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ type of thing. Either way, I thought I had to get over it.” Shiro shrugs. All he can do is look down at his hands. He squeezes them together, all his knuckles across from each other, the backs of his fingers forming a little folded table.

“And that’s why you ran away from me?”

Shiro exhales roughly — all the thoughts and emotions he’d buried deep under a joking facade felt like they were poking out of his skin, like he was some fucked up porcupine. He looks Adam in the eye. “Look,” he says, “I’d been flirting with you for ages, and you never seemed to notice. My brother went and told you _explicitly_ that I had a thing for you and you didn’t do anything — not that that’s your fault, or anything — but I took that as ‘no, thank you’. So I ran away to cope, and then pushed you away while doing it. So I’m sorry for that, and for what I put you through.” He scrubs his hands all over his face, and slaps his cheeks for good measure. “But I’m not sorry for loving you,” he mumbles through his squished cheeks, “and I want you to know that, even if you don’t believe me.” He grabs the nearest pillow, buries his face in it, and yells. He does it until he’s out of air and the cotton pillowcase is damp and scratchy in his mouth, breathes, and smushes his face in it one last time.

Shiro smiles at Adam, who looks at him with fondness and amusement and not a little heartbreak. Adam’s hands, he notices, grip his arms tightly enough that Shiro worries about bruises showing up the next day — and yet, he understands. “That was a lot of emotions at once,” Shiro says apologetically, and gestures to Adam. “Your turn.”

He’s utterly unprepared for the mass of human warmth that flies into his arms. He tumbles backwards, his head saved from a nasty bump by Adam’s arms. Adam’s hugging him as if they’re the last people on earth and the only thing they have is each other — why not make it worth it? Shiro grips just as tightly around Adam’s middle and inhales, the smell of his aftershave enveloping them both. God, he’d missed this. He burrows his face in Adam’s chest and hopes his shirt wipes away the stray tears that leak out of his eyes.

The world slowly sets itself to rights during their embrace. Both of them are silent, save for a few indistinguishable sniffles. They’re a mess, but at least they’re a mess together.

They finally pull apart and Adam's smile is wobbly and wet. “That took a lot out of you, didn’t it?” he asks, cradling Shiro’s face in his hands. Shiro’s eyes slide shut and he sighs contentedly, nuzzling Adam’s palm.

“I’m not used to it,” Shiro replies, “but I had a _lot_ of time to think.” Every time he’d seen Adam over the past few weeks it’d felt like he’d bumped a new bruise into his skin; and yet the whole time they were apart all he could do was keep pressing, keep prodding, keep thinking about all the ways he’d misread things, and, later on, how much he’d gone and fucked them up. Reluctant tears threaten to leak out of the corners of his eyes at the sheer recollection of it all and Shiro frowns, praying they don’t fall down and embarrass him any further. They do fall, of course, and Adam wipes them away with his thumbs, smiling softly, and Shiro’s breath hitches with the easy weight of it all.

“I love you,” Shiro says, “and it hurt so much when I thought you didn’t and when you didn’t believe me.”

Adam’s tears trails down his own cheeks and he swipes them away under his glasses. “I’ve loved you for a long time, too,” he says.

 

—

 

They decide, once they’re all cried out and they’re lying on Shiro’s bed with their legs tangled together, to err on caution’s sake and go out on a proper date.

“I’d rather go out with you without all this drama,” Adam says pointedly, his nose rubbed pink and the rims of his eyes a similar colour. He looks like he just spent the last half-hour playing out in the cold, except he’s comfortably warm everywhere Shiro touches. He yields to Shiro’s questing hands with that unique brand of fond-frustrated that’s reserved only for him. “I just want one day where we can have all those first date jitters and not have to worry about whether or not this is going to crash and burn five months down the line.”

Which is why, despite never having done so in his life, Shiro is teetering on knife blades attached to his feet. He grips onto Adam for dear life as kids half his size zoom past him like swollen, deadly dodgeballs in a game of King’s Court.

“You’re doing great,” Adam says placatingly.

Shiro doesn’t bother looking up from the ground, carefully shuffling his left foot a couple of inches, then his right. “The kids over there are laughing at us,” he mutters, nodding at a group of preteens on the other side of the rink, trying and failing to muffle their laughter.

Adam leans back to peer at the little bastards. His arm slips in Shiro’s grip. Shiro, who is Not Ready to Let Go, yanks him back and hugs his arm to his chest. As far as he’s concerned, Adam’s arm is the body pillow he had when he was a baby and kept on using until it fell apart when he was eighteen — it is his _security_. “You are not leaving me to _die_ ,” Shiro hisses.

Adam smirks. His face morphs into that of a precocious child, his eyes wide, innocent and completely aware of what he’s doing. “Well,” he says, simpering at Shiro, “it sure looks like the tables have tabled.”

Damn him.

Two can play at that game.

Shiro shifts closer, their faces are only inches apart. He bats his eyelashes and bites his lips into a moue that makes them look extremely kissable, at least to Adam, whose irises have dilated into a thin umber ring around his pupils. Shiro inches closer and puts his lips to Adam’s ear. “But I need you,” he breathes, “so bad.” He feels the air of Adam’s startled hiccup and fights the urge to snort. Adam’s never shown a particular propensity for cliche lines ripped off of shitty romance novels, but Shiro files this moment away for later. It could be an ace in the sleeve, or at the very least another whoopee cushion he can keep using for shits.

Satisfied, Shiro leans back and continues skating, happily holding on to Adam. Adam stays conspicuously silent, long enough to worry Shiro — were sex jokes different now that they’d started…whatever this was? Does Adam think Shiro wants to sleep with him? Or even worse, does Adam think Shiro _doesn’t_ want to sleep with him? The answer was, of course, that Shiro would be happy to do anything that Adam wanted, especially after they called each other boyfriends to their faces. And in front of other people.

He sneaks a peek at Adam and jerks in surprise when he finds Adam staring at him, as if Shiro had just mentioned that his favourite Korean place had announced an all you can eat lunch buffet on a Tuesday, just for him. Shiro’s flattered — he knows how much Adam loves that shit — but he seriously cannot believe that Adam gets hot over fake moans.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Shiro says.

Adam blinks, then rolls his eyes. “What,” he says, like he’s not about to shatter Shiro’s mind, “you think I don’t get horny?”

“What the _fuck_.” Shiro can’t help his blush. It’s downright _filthy_ , coming from Adam, usually so mild-mannered, the image of the good boy all parents want their children to bring home _._ Shiro feels like a Victorian lady ready to faint on a settee. “You- you can’t just say that!” he sputters, scandalized. He might as well have a feather fan and be done with it. “There are kids around!”

Adam shrugs, a _what can you do_ gesture. “But I did,” he says, and Shiro seethes on the inside because he knows he can help it, the little shit. “I’m not gonna say any more than that, but I’m sure you can fill in the rest of the blanks.” Adam's leer is faux-lecherous, with a turn of mischief on the side. “Or maybe I’ll fill them in, who knows.”

Shiro gapes at him with a mix of horror and awe. “Who are you and what have you done with Adam Waite?” he says, finally easing up his death grip on Adam’s arm to poke and prod at him. “The man I know would _never_ be so louche.”

“I’m his sexier, older, more confident twin…Jadam.”

Shiro nearly topples over in laughter. He’s only saved by Adam’s arms, wrapped tightly around his waist. He wheezes into Adam’s shoulder, his breaths puffing little clouds into the biting winter air. Shiro wipes his watery eyes and swipes at his nose for good measure. Adam’s cheeks are pink from the cold and a more acute form of embarrassment that Shiro knows he gets from PDA. Shiro fights back his smile, schooling his face into a stern, disapproving frown. “Well, Jadam,” he says, mercifully not breaking at the utter ridiculousness of the name and the sheer effort Adam put into thinking of one so _stupid_ , “tell your very handsome twin brother that he _better_ come back to me — we have a date to finish and I want him to be my boyfriend.”

“Oh?” Adam says, eyes crinkling with his smile. The edges of his glasses are starting to fog up, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “I think I can pass on the message.”

“Please do,” Shiro replies, smiling back.

Their first kiss is cold, and a little rough — they bump noses and smudge Adam’s glasses — but it feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel!! Is here!!
> 
> I realized over the course of writing this fic that I'd mentally placed Adam and Shiro as sophomores/juniors, but wrote in a bar scene. You might think this is a narrative oversight. It's not - Adam, Shiro and I are all Canadian.
> 
> Also this is my first ever sequel and I am PSYCHED. If you've waited for this after the ridiculousness that was "still stuttering", hi!! Thank you for waiting! If you've checked out "still stuttering" because of this fic, <3 <3 <3\. Love you all!
> 
> As always, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/klanceitup) and on [tumblr](http://kuxokawa.tumblr.com)!


End file.
